


22/8/3155

by shadowcat500



Series: Spectrum Side-Stories [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Dystopia, Far Future, Gen, I think that's what it's called, did this for a writing competition, got second place, paragon - Freeform, well depends how far you consider over one thousand to be, yeah we got one of those, you know the kind of person who is really stubborn about being in the right?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-07 02:37:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18401426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowcat500/pseuds/shadowcat500
Summary: Humanity had died out in the Collapse. Those that hadn't fled to a distant planet had been wiped out, eradicated, bones rotted to dust.Well, apparently not.





	22/8/3155

“Class, please open your books and write down the date and title of today’s work.”

The year is 3155, and this is the eighth week of studying the early twenty-first century. I get that it’s an important period of history that is crucial to our understanding of how humanity came to Terra, but really, how much is there to learn about twenty-five years? I mean, seriously.

I scribble the date and title down and seconds later my teacher changes the picture on the holoscreen to a picture of people running with their mouths wide open in terror from a collapsing building and launches into a lecture on something about the plague theory and collapsing infrastructure, blah blah blah, I’ve heard this before. My attention is finally caught, however, when she taps a link on the screen, which takes us to a black screen.

“Class, today you are getting the very special privilege of seeing the first footage of the remnants of an Earth city in over five hundred years. Equinox, who you should all know,” Miss looks directly at me at this point. (My dad runs Equinox. It’s no big deal.) “have sent a robot to the distant solar system of Earth, and we of Skye Green Academy will be streamed the footage of the robot’s landing. It should be online in... there!” The black screen flickers to life, to footage of... clouds. Just clouds. The entire screen is covered with clouds. Personally I thought it would be at least a bit more dramatic, like fire or skeletons or something that I couldn’t just see from my window any time I liked.

Wait, scratch that, the camera is apparently falling through the clouds, about to hit Earth properly in about a minute. 

Make that thirty seconds.

Fifteen seconds.

Five seconds.

The robot’s hoverfans kick into gear right before hitting the ground, but it slams into the earth anyway, hard enough to make us all wince at the crack it makes. We really are extremely lucky that Equinox’s tech is so hard-wearing: any old stuff from Earth would probably have broken from that hit. The robot manages to float back up a metre or two and slowly rotates, the camera scanning the surroundings for and threats, or any life at all. 

“Technology similar to hoverfans was first invented in the 20th century, back on Earth! It’s almost like the bot’s gone home!” A girl yells across the room, one of the weirdo kids who knows way too much about 21st century history and culture (there’s a surprising number of them). I ignore her to focus on the feed. The bot has finished scanning the surroundings, and- 

No way. 

There’s still life on Earth. 

Everyone in the room, including me, gasps. It was thought that the event that killed 80% of humanity and drove the rest to space had wiped out all sentient life still on Earth, but the birds beginning to chirp again in the trees strongly disagree with that “fact”. 

***

The robot begins to move towards where the old maps say a city used to be. It hovers through a large forest, scaring animals and birds as we go, and everyone gasps whenever we see a new one. It’s practically magical.  
All too soon we arrive at the ruined city, so old that it doesn’t even have a real name anymore. It’s exactly as I expected it to look. All that’s left, really, is a crumbling tower surrounded by more crumbling buildings, all still on fire somehow. 

Whatever, twenty-first century tech was weird anyway. There aren’t even any plants to make it more interesting, it’s all just crumbling old buildings and rubble.  
We look around for a while, the screen overlaid with a picture of how the city used to look with around three-hundred thousand-and-twenty-eight attention pins, and it looks exactly like all of the old pictures of Earth you can find with a few taps on a holopad.  
Well, it looks like the old pictures until a figure appears on the top of one of the hills. We think it’s part of the simulation until the camera moves to focus on it. 

It’s a dog, which we expected (animals clearly survived the plague, why wouldn’t domestic dogs), but what we didn’t expect is a living human to follow behind it.  
The entire class gasps in shock. Everyone knows that most of humanity fled Earth after the plague and those that stayed died. But the boy on the hill of rubble and his dog clearly survived. My teacher pulls out a holopad and begins frantically typing an email to Equinox. When she sends it the bot immediately begins to zoom over the rubble to the boy, who stumbles back before looking closer and then, slowly, tapping the bot’s body. At this point, the bot activates the specimen retriever, and the boy and his dog disappear, teleported to the Equinox building for study.

Miss declares that class is dismissed, knowing that we’ll never focus after that.

***

When the schoolday ends, I immediately take a magnet-train to Equinox headquarters and run in through the front door. The receptionist lets me in immediately, and I hurtle through to my father’s office.  
He’s sitting quietly at his desk, going through some files on his holopad, but looks up and smiles when he hears me open the door. “Cora! It’s lovely to see you, sweetheart. What brings you here?”  
“Aren’t I allowed to just come and see my dad?” I tackle-hug him, the way I always do, and almost knock him off the chair.  
“How was class today? A little bird told me you got to watch the feed of Earth!”  
“Yeah, it was so cool! There were plants and birds and, get this, an actual human!”  
“A human?!” He adjusts his glasses with a shocked expression.  
“Yeah, I know right! The specimen collector picked him up, and I’d really like to go see him, he looked around my age and I thought it would be good for him to see a human around his own age when he wakes up.”  
“Excellent idea Cora, taking after your mother.” He gathers up his files and grabs my hand. “To the lab!”

***

The boy is lying on a couch next to his dog when me and dad get there. Dad moves over to the lab team to explain the situation, while I walk over to the boy. He looks pale (and I know that’s just because of the teleporter but I’m worried all the same) but remarkably healthy when you know that there’s no real civilisation still on Earth.  
I poke him. I know it’s stupid and probably dangerous, but is there a better method of of waking someone up?  
It works perfectly, and he jerks away with a yell as he wakes, then looks at me in surprise. “Who the hell are you?”  
“I’m Cora, and you’re now on Terra.”  
“I’m what?!”  
“Yup! We found you on a-”

He interrupts me mid-explanation. “How stupid do you think I am?! The Terra Exodus failed. I’m not an idiot, carrot head.” He breathes in deeply and shuts his eyes for a moment. “You’re lying to me, and I’m just in another city. You have to do better than that.”  
“But it’s true! Earth civilisation was dead, last we checked. You’re the only living human from Earth that we know of.” Another Earth city?  
That’s really gets his attention. “You didn’t find anyone else?”  
“No..? Is there anyone else?”  
He jerks away, fear in his eyes for a moment. “Wh-no! No one else. Just me. And my dog.” He looks down at the golden-brown dog lying over his ankles. It’s relatively big, but I’ve seen bigger around the city.  
“I think you’re lying to me.”  
“No, I’m not! Why- why would I lie?” He’s clearly afraid, even if he’s trying to hide it.  
“You’re definitely lying. There are others, aren’t there?”  
“No!” He’s definitely lying.  
“There are others. Oh. My. God. Other people on Earth? Earth is in ruins, the fact that you survived is incredible! Wonderful! Why would you say there aren’t others, though? We can help you, bring you to Terra while we fix Earth! We could-”  
He interrupts me with a dark tone and a stony look. “On Earth, the history of our ancestors, the ones who released the plague, is very important. Do you know that? Learning it is considered more important than learning how we rebuilt when your ancestors left to escape the consequences of an event they caused.”  
I think he’s trying to imply something, but I’m not sure what he’s getting at. “No? We left to make sure humanity survived. It’s great that you survived and all, but we can make you and your people’s lives better now even if we didn’t earlier!”  
“You’re too late.”  
“What?”  
“You’re too late. We rebuilt. Even the West Desert is rebuilding. We saved Earth without you. Stop pretending you people can do anything for the world you abandoned.” He turns away, and pulls the hood of his jacket up.  
“West Desert?”  
He doesn’t respond.  
“If you won’t talk, I’ll call my dad over.”  
He turns back to me, a scowl on his face. “And what will your dad do, huh, carrot head?”  
“He’s Head of the Equinox Corporation.”  
“And?”  
Fuck, he won’t know anything about the Equinox Corporation, well fucking done Cora. “The people who brought you here are Equinox.”  
“And?”  
I sigh and turn towards my dad. “Hey, da-”  
He grabs my shoulder and turns me back to him, and hisses “Shut up! Fine. The West Desert is a desert in the west. It used to be forests, but the weather systems fucked up and now it’s a desert. Happy?”  
“Have you been there?”  
“No.”  
“Aw. Anyway, thanks!” I get up and begin to walk away.  
“Hey- where are you going?!”  
I turn back to him. “To tell my dad about everything?”  
“You can’t!”  
“Why? We’re going to help!” I smile. In some ways, I really am my grandmother’s grandkid.  
“Because-.”  
I smile, and continue walking towards my dad.

**Author's Note:**

> Made this for a writing competition, never got a response.  
> EDIT 28/06/19: nvm got second place
> 
> Thanks for reading, have a great day!


End file.
